Thursday, August 25, 2011

We are lucky enough to have Wild Run Salmon at our farmers market to provides us with fresh frozen, wild Alaskan salmon. They offer a deal when you buy in bulk, so we filled our freezer with 20 pounds of salmon! Now, we love using the salmon the way it is, but also wanted some smoked for salads, pasta, chowder and dips. Matt decided to trying smoking it himself.
I was a little worried it wouldn't work very well in our hot smoker (as opposed to a cold smoker) and we'd end up with salmon jerky. Matt though was ever confident.
After being boned and cut into 2" strips, the salmon sits for two to three days in a marinade in the fridge. Matt's marinade smelled wonderful with the soy sauce, brown sugar and garlic. He used a bowl on top to keep the salmon under the marinade.
Then it gets rinsed off and let to sit for an hour at room temperature before hitting the smoker.
He placed the salmon skin side down on sheets of tin foil in the smoker. Matt chose cherry wood for his smoke. Then, he was careful to keep the heat at what our smoker called the ideal temperature (between 200 - 250 F), not to hot and not too cold. We had read that it should smoke for 2 - 3 hours, but Matt took ours off after 1 1/2. It was cooked through and we didn't want it to dry out.

Matt's Salmon Brine
(this brine is great even if you're just throwing your salmon on the grill)

My MIL went to Alaska one year and went salmon fishing. She shipped home nearly 100 pounds of salmon and we got a big load because we had a chest freezer to hold it. We smoked a lot of it, and it was so delicious and so fresh tasting. I missed that so much when it was gone.